Stability analysis of catenary electric road system with variable stiffness and damping

Catenary electric road systems enable dynamic charging by powering pantograph-equipped trucks from the catenary. Nonlinear variation of the catenary stiffness and damping make the stability region of the pantograph-catenary system difficult to estimate. To alleviate this difficulty, an analytical-solution based stability analysis method is proposed for the pantograph-catenary system. First, it derives a pantograph-catenary vibration model with variable stiffness and damping. A solving method is then developed to obtain an analytical solution. Using this analytical solution, the condition for stability region is derived and the nonlinear vibration behavior is estimated. The analytical results are further verified using both simulations and experiments conducted under different vehicle speeds.